Quotes by Truman Capote

“Are the dead as lonesome as the living?”

“Hot weather opens the skull of a city, exposing its white brain, and its heart of nerves, which sizzle like the wires inside a lightbulb. And there exudes a sour extra-human smell that makes the ve...”

“The only obligation any artist can have is to himself. His works means nothing, otherwise. It has no meaning.”

“The answer is good things only happen to you if you're good. Good? Honest is more what I mean... Be anything but a coward, a pretender, an emotional crook, a whore: I'd rather have cancer than a di...”

“Kay yawned and rested her forehead against the windowpane, her fingers idly strumming the guitar: the strings sang a hollow, lulling tune, as monotonously soothing as the Southern landscape, smudge...”

“The walls of the cell fell away, the sky came down, I saw the big yellow bird.”

“A kind of silence, if I may say, was walking through the house, and, like most silence, it was not silent at all: it rapped on the doors, echoed in the clocks, creaked on the stairs, leaned forward...”

“Because it's indeed difficult to portray, in any meaningful depth, another being, his appearance, speech, mentality, without to some degree, and often for quite trifling cause, offending him. The t...”

“You cant give your heart to a wild thing.”

“The average personality reshapes frequently, every few years even our bodies undergo a complete overhaul - desirable or not, it is a natural thing that we should change. All right, here were two pe...”

“Sorrow and profound fatigue are at the heart of Dewey's silence. It had been his ambition to learn "exactly what happened in that house that night." Twice now he'd been told, and the two versions w...”

“Those fellows, they're always crying over killers. Never a thought for the victims.”

“Any love is natural and beautiful that lies within a persons nature; only hypocrites would hold a man responsible for what he loves, emotional illiterates and those of righteous envy, who, in their...”

“Duntz asked Smith, 'Added up, how much money did you get from the Cutters?' 'Between forty and fifty dollars.”

“Of course there is a Santa Claus. Its just that no single somebody could do all he has to do. So the Lord has spread the task among us all. Thats why everybody is Santa Claus. I am. You are.”

“But I'm not a saint yet. I'm an alcoholic. I'm a drug addict. I'm homosexual. I'm a genius.”

“Like the waters of the river, like the motorists on the highway, and like the yellow trains streaking down the Santa Fe tracks, drama, in the shape of exceptional happenings, had never stopped there.”

“...he called after her as shedisappeared down the path, a pretty girl in a hurry...”

“I only object when any one particular group...gets a stranglehold on American criticism and squeezes out anybody who doesn't conform to its own standards....The ax falls, ecumenically, on the head ...”

“Before publication, and if provided by persons whose judgment you trust, yes, of course criticism helps. But after something is published, all I want to read or hear is praise.”